Justin Brennan, Product Manager in New York, NY, United States
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Justin Brennan

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

New York, NY, United States

Toptal member since October 20, 2022

Bio

Justin is an experienced product manager passionate about creating exceptional experiences and whose perspective is based on design thinking and user-centered design. He has delivered internal and external products across a diverse user base with contrasting goals and optimized solutions for their unique contexts. Justin has worked with nonprofit organizations, startups, and large enterprises, delivering product, technology, and business initiatives on wide-ranging efforts.

Expertise

  • CRM Design
  • Enterprise SaaS
  • Human-centered Design (HCD)
  • Jira
  • Product Management
  • UX Design
  • User Experience (UX)
  • User Onboarding

Work Experience

Product Manager and Design Consultant

2019 - PRESENT
Freelance
  • Led cross-functional teams through user-centered best practices across the full product lifecycle: discovery, delivery, launch, and beyond.
  • Drove strategy, vision, and mission alignment of minimally viable products across multiple product teams, stakeholders, and leadership.
  • Conducted user research to capture pain points, design a new customer journey, and define business and user requirements. I prioritized the roadmap and determined the best way to build new features and functionalities.

Senior Product Manager | Salesforce and Enterprise Platforms

2018 - 2019
Thryv
  • Led product management and design of enterprise platforms and tools from discovery to delivery and maintenance through systems and data analysis, user research, journey mapping, UX design and prototyping, requirements, user stories, and backlog.
  • Collaborated with leadership, stakeholders, product managers, and engineers on roadmaps to define integration priorities, scope, and feature development across enterprise platforms, technology, and systems.
  • Conducted research with end-users and stakeholders through contextual interviews and gathered key pain points to define the scope of the minimum viable product and its features.

Product Lead | Enterprise Systems and User Experience

2013 - 2018
YP
  • Leveraged leadership buy-in to build a team with product management and a user-centered design framework for launching new products, features, and business initiatives supporting internal systems and tools, users, and the go-to-market strategy.
  • Managed a team of analysts, administrators, and user experience designers to design and deliver solutions to product, technology, and business initiatives for digital advertising products.
  • Led and facilitated cross-functional efforts, managing stakeholders, priorities, user experience research and design, backlog, development, delivery, and support.

Project History

New Website and Online Learning Portal

Launched a new website and online learning portal with customer-centric features, content, and curriculum designed to deliver on key performance indicators and success metrics.

I grew the customer base by over 400% through the design and execution of re-branding, marketing, and engagement strategies, including email campaigns, product offerings, and pricing structures. I also improved course completion rates by over 20% and daily active usage by over 50% with vision and mission-driven features, including blogs and an expanded content ecosystem.

Thryv Product and Business Initiatives

Enabled 12% subscriber growth and 50% customer engagement increase for the flagship product, a B2B digital SaaS/CRM for small businesses, by designing and implementing a Salesforce workflow functionality with optimized operational processes.

I achieved 85% customer integration retention with new system features and redesigned workflows and operational processes that unified the product offering and service models of integrated organizations.

I also increased the manager's daily bandwidth by 30% with object, dashboard, and user interface design. Operational efficiency was also improved by automating manual tasks and designing data structures that enabled stakeholders to measure key performance indicators.

YP Product and Business Initiatives

Improved order accuracy by 22% through data analysis and user-centered design that uncovered pain points and technical gaps and redesigned content UIs, standardized user views, IA, interactions, and validations that eliminated data input errors.

I uncovered a $20 million opportunity through a data, research, and design initiative to eliminate customer claims in the lead quote interface. Research and analysis, design, prototyping, testing, technical documentation, and sprint planning delivered new interaction designs eliminating errors in lead quote accuracy between the front-end sales UI and the back-end operations UI.

I also reduced customer onboarding time by 31% with redesigned and optimized business processes and workflows to integrate new order data objects. I designed and delivered a technical functionality enabling a new customer experience model and a single point of contact for customer interaction.

Certifications

AUGUST 2017 - PRESENT

Human-centered Design

IDEO

DECEMBER 2015 - PRESENT

Salesforce Administrator

Salesforce

AUGUST 2012 - PRESENT

Usability and User-centered Design

California State University, Fullerton

Skills

Tools

Flow, Jira, Confluence, Balsamiq, Axure RP Pro, Illustrator CC, Sketch, Rally, Figma, Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer

Paradigms

Human-centered Design (HCD), Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Testing, B2B2C, Iterative Design, User Testing, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C)

Platforms

Digital Advertising Platforms

Other

Product Management, User Experience (UX), UX Design, CRM Design, User Onboarding, User Workflows, Enterprise SaaS, Digital Advertising, Roadmaps, Feature Roadmaps, Product Strategy Consultant, Salesforce, User Stories, Product Ownership, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Design, Onboarding, User Flows, Data Management, Leadership, UX Leadership, Enterprise, Administration, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Customer Success, Certified Salesforce Administrator, New Products, Discovery, User Journeys, User Journey Maps, Customer Journeys, Product Journeys, Empathy, Mind Mapping, UI Design, Graphic Design, Digital Graphics, Paid Advertising, Advertising Design, Mobile Advertising, Prototyping, Collaboration, CSS, HTML, JSON, APIs, Mobile, Web, Apps, Platforms, Operations, System Integration, API Integration, Data, SaaS Product Management, User Needs, User Roles, Dashboards, Dashboard Design, Dashboard Development, Reporting, Workflow Tools, Workflow, Photoshop CC, Product Leadership, Two-sided Marketplaces, Web Portals, Mobile Design, Web Design, Customer Support, Analytics, Product Roadmaps, Feature Prioritization, Backlog Grooming, Bug Triage, Stakeholder Management, Stakeholder Interviews, User Interviews, Customer Interviews, Jobs to be Done (JTBD), Enterprise Software, User Surveys, Sprint Planning, Service Design, Technical Requirements, Jira Administrator, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Flutter, Miro, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Business Analysis, eCommerce, Process Flows, Process Design, Process Mapping, Process Improvement, Software Development Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Technical Product Management, Mobile Applications, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Product Owner, Developer Relations

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